Wednesday, July 22, 2009

The world's most popular desktop database is going to the web. That's what is fairly clear now from the Access Team Blog and several other public sources. The actual deployment details are still a fairly close held secret (including yours truly), but what is certain:

1) Microsoft is renewing their commitment to MS Access. You could argue that Access 2007 sets the stage for Access 2010, but most agree Access 2007 wasn't a huge leap forward.

2) MS Access is back in the competitive game. Zoho, OpenOffice, TrackVia, Alpha5 and others have been nibbling at Access' proverbial toes for a some time now. Not with any significant success...yet.

3) Access development will change significantly, for the better. Access 2010 will most assuredly not be a repeat of the Data Access Pages debacle. Even taking web functionality out of the picture, the ability to set data macros like SQL Server triggers will be a huge step forward for any Access solutions that need higher levels of data integrity and validation.

There are more interesting points to make, but Microsoft isn't releasing the details yet, and we don't want to risk violating non-disclosure!